Many of us are eating sweet potatoes throughout the year — baked, turned into noodles, or just boiled and mashed — but I’m declaring November the official start of roasted sweet potato season. When you roast sweet potatoes, their flesh becomes sweeter, burnished by the hot oven, and the flesh tenderizes into the most delicious bites ever.

There are a couple of smart things you can do to make your roasted sweet potatoes even better, though — and none of them require special ingredients or equipment.

Be generous with the oil (or butter): Don’t skimp on the oil or clarified butter on your roasting sheet, or you’ll end up with stuck-on, dry sweet potatoes!

Don’t crowd the pan: You’ll get more color (and here, color equals flavor) if your potatoes have room to let off moisture instead of steaming on top of each other.

Roast until they toast: I love this little phrase! Don’t try to flip your sweet potatoes or stir them until the edges have a little color. Color is a good indicator of doneness but also adds all the flavor.

6 Smart Ways to Upgrade Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Flavored oil or clarified butter: Don’t limit your sweets to olive oil before roasting. Clarified butter is a true game-changer when it comes to getting more flavor from your potatoes, but consider garlic or chile oil for your sweet potatoes too. Pro tip: if you want to use a delicate nut oil for flavor, add it while the potatoes are still warm after roasting.

Fruit juice: Sweet potato wedges tossed with a little apple cider or the juice of an orange (in addition to oil) get a caramelized glaze in the oven that doesn’t require much extra effort.

Condiments: These can be before and after additions. Add a little maple syrup before roasting or add some garlic-chile paste after. Better yet? Do both!

Dressing: Here’s a little hack for all roasted vegetables: Make a vinaigrette just for roasted vegetables. I love a brown butter and apple cider version, but maple-dijon or even a basic balsamic vinaigrette is a one-step way to finish your roasted vegetables and make them irresistible.

Cheese: Yes, you can roast sweet potatoes with cheese! I love Parmesan (it holds up well in the oven), but cheddar and Gouda are great bets to add too while the potatoes are hot from the oven.

Are GMOs safe? The debate continues creating more questions than answers. Let’s start at the beginning –

Genetically Modified Organism or GMO are living organisms that do not occur in nature or through crossbreeding. (Crossbreeding is when seeds are merged to create a whole new product. The genetics are not altered. Just marrying products together to create a new variety.) Their genetics are artificially adjusted through genetic engineering. This process was created to help the organism withstand herbicides or produce their own insecticide. A GMO product is supposed to be more tolerant to droughts and provide enhanced nutrition. Basically, it creates a hardier plant that needs less labor.

So what does this mean to you? The biotech industry is promising that GMOs are safe, but there is little evidence to prove it, and I could not find any concrete data.

In fact, there is more evidence that GMO products create health problems and environmental damage. Many countries require GMO products to be labeled, while 300 regions now ban growing GMOs. Bottom line – consumers beware!

In 2015, ABC News reported that 93% of Americans believe that GMOs should be labeled. Unfortunately, the US and Canada do not require labels, so call your congressperson. The Non-GMO Project was created to prove information consumers need, but still call your congressperson. We all need to know what we are eating.

It is almost impossible not to consume GMOs, especially if you eat processed foods. They can be found in flavorings, molasses, sucrose, sweeteners, and yeast products – just to name a few. Don’t think a high protein diet will save you. Guess what’s in the animal’s feed? GMOs!

This was the one that got me. Say you are a farmer, and your family has had the land for 200 years. A big corporation buys the land next to yours and plants GMO produce, but his crop is patented because the seed was genetically modified. Wind, weather, and insects move this GMO seed onto your land where it begins to grow. Guess what – you can now be sued! In my research I read, “Genetically modified crops pose a serious threat to farmer sovereignty and to the national food security of any country where they are grown.” Now that is scary!

It has been reported that over 80% of the GMO crops are planted to resist herbicides. So, people are using more herbicides, like Roundup, because the GMO process is causing other plants to be just as resistant. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the herbicide glyphosate (ingredient in weed killers) is “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

It is believed that GMOs are also responsible for “superweeds” and “superbugs”. Both of these need even stronger poisons to be eliminated. The worst part, if there could be something worst than all of this, once a GMO is used in the environment, it is here to stay.

So what can you do? Demand information from your stores, your congressperson, major companies, and anyone else you can think of. We all have to eat to live. What’s the point in eating healthy if you do not know what you are eating? Think I will have a sweet potato smoothie, because Nash Produce sweet potatoes are non-GMO! And don’t forget to call your congressperson.

The number one sweet potato question that I am constantly asked is, “What is the difference between a sweet potato and yam?”. So here is your history lesson.

There is a big debate on where sweet potatoes originally came from, but we do know that the ones we eat today in the US came from Central America. These sweet potatoes were more the white and purple flesh variety, which have a smoother texture. The orange variety, which is the dominate variety today, was created. The orange variety’s flesh is stringy making it very different from the others.

From my research, some guy in Louisiana decided that since the orange version was so different, it should have its own name. So, he declared them Yams.

That is right – Yams are Sweet Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes are Yams! It is always fun to ask someone which they like better -sweet potatoes or yams-then blow their mind by telling them that its all the same.

Now, yams do exist, but they are a closer relation to the potato. Yams can be found in Africa and Asia, so unless you shop at an international market, anytime you have eaten a yam in the US, it was really a sweet potato.

By law, anything labelled yams must include sweet potatoes on the packaging. But, who looks for that!

Have fun with this at Thanksgiving! Hopefully it will distract the family discussion of why you do not have a girlfriend/boyfriend, when are you getting married, when are you getting a job, and when will there be grandkids? Ah, the holidays!